Much as we might complain about politicians lying, it’s not the job of the government to fix the problem. That’s the implication of last week’s decision by a federal appellate court in a case involving a state law purporting to punish false attacks on candidates for public office. If the court is right — and I think it is — then only voters can exact a penalty for lying.
The dispute arose after a local prosecutor announced that a grand jury would be looking into an advertisement from North Carolina’s 2020 race for attorney general. The ad in question, run by the incumbent, was alleged to violate a 90-year-old state law criminalizing “derogatory reports” about political candidates. The plaintiffs sought an injunction against the prosecutor’s plan. Last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled that the injunction should have been granted, because the law was almost certainly unconstitutional.
The court’s thoughtful and comprehensive opinion is worth reading in full, for reasons I won’t go into here. Suffice to say that in recent decades, the usual fate of statutes purporting to punish lies about political candidates is that they violate the First Amendment.
